Biden Wants to Prepare for Future Surges of Unaccompanied Minors
Okay, that news is bad enough, but it gave me a chuckle to see how they are spinning the present surge of illegal alien kids with the arrival of Biden in the Oval Office—just happens from time to time, move along, nothing to see!
It is just a normal cycle and we must be better prepared by spending more of your tax dollars for housing for the mostly teenaged boys. That apparently is the talking point coming from this White House.
If you missed my post the other day about planes landing in the night in Tennessee, check it out here:
One good thing about the Tennessee expose’ is that the secrecy angle has brought the Administration’s movement of the ‘children’ to the media’s attention, but it has been going on for years.
We see that WRCB-TV in Chattanooga has an update. I’m happy that they are trying to get more accurate information on the Tennessee situation by using data at the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, but I have a bone to pick with them about their headline. Here is my complaint:
The Unaccompanied Alien Children are illegal aliens NOT REFUGEES.
They aren’t even legitimate asylum seekers unless, and until, they file an asylum claim.
WRBC-TV:
What happens next in the refugee resettlement process of migrant children?
It’s been more than a week since four planes carrying migrant children landed in Chattanooga.
Similar operations are happening across the country. Some of those children are being cared for in a group home, but hundreds of others left the airport on a bus.
Channel 3 learned what happens next in the refugee resettlement process, and the number of children relying on sponsors in Tennessee.
From October to March, 66 unaccompanied children were released to a sponsor in Hamilton County.
While the federal government looks for a sponsor, children are taken to one of about 200 facilities across twenty-two states. A child therapist says this process can take a toll on the children involved.
There are about 200 facilities across the country where unaccompanied children are being housed.
One of them is in Chattanooga, which can house between 30 and 50 minors.
As of May 13, there are around 20,000 kids in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, nationwide.Their average stay is 31 days.
More on that shortly…
But, back to the Pew articleI mentioned above. Get ready for another federal agency for the ‘children.’
The Biden administration wants to create a permanent federal workforce to provide housing for unaccompanied migrant children during surges like the one that began in January and continues to overwhelm authorities.
Mayorkas is not wrong. Surges have occurred periodically, but Trump did get a handle on the problem toward the end of his presidency.
“We all know that surges arise periodically,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said during a congressional hearing earlier this month. “They arose in 2019. They arose in 2016, in 2014 and well before that. Migration is a very dynamic and fluid challenge that we have faced for many, many years.”
Mayorkas said during the hearing that DHS is exploring options, but the agency did not respond to a Stateline request for more detail.
Currently, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, houses the children by relying on state-licensed contractors. But Republican governors in Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming recently blocked contractors in their states from taking in the children, claiming that the unaccompanied kids would displace those already in state foster care or limit states’ ability to make new placements.
However, there currently are no federally funded long-term foster care providers for unaccompanied minors in any of those five states.
The Pew article goes on to say that Senator Rob Portman said the previous administration had no surges, but I am sad to say he is wrong. They might not have had a surge at the end of Trump’s time in office, but they sure did have a surge earlier as you will see below.
I know it isn’t what we want to see, but Donald Trump presided over the largest surge year so far.
For perspective, in 2003, when ORR became the agency in charge of UACs, there were 8,000 arriving illegally that year.
And, so here is my big question:
Since over 70% of the ‘childrenare ages 15-17, what happens to them when they age-out as they turn 18? Tens of thousands of Trump’s UACs likely already aged out. Where are they? Why does no one ask? Are they simply loose in your towns and counties? I think so!
And, see that the Left-leaning Migration Policy Institute is critical of the Biden team’s handling of the mess. Are they helping set the narrative that an entire new bureaucratic structure is the only answer to the border crisis?
In the wake of a “wave of scorn and fury” as described by CNNno less, Biden press secretary Jen Psaki attempted so set the record straight yesterday.
But, first see what CNN is saying.
The important takeaway is that the administration has screwed-up royally on immigration across the board as they blame the public for conflating the border crisis with the refugee admissions program.
Is it any wonder the average American, the average news reporter as I saw yesterday, doesn’t understand the difference?
For over a decade that I’ve been following the refugee program, the Open Borders Left has tried to make you think that the illegal border jumpers are REFUGEES.
They, the socialists/progressives, have conflated the two things because they want you to have sympathy for illegal aliens. Now, their propaganda has come back to bite them.
Americans don’t want legal refugees anymore than they want the illegals invading the border.
Progressive backlash on refugee cap puts Biden on notice
Joe Biden’s swift reversals on raising the nation’s refugee cap over the past 48 hours marked a rare moment of uncertainty for the new President within a carefully choreographed first 100 days — one that underscored the power of progressives to force Biden to change course, even as they face legislative setbacks in a deeply divided Washington.
[….]
By way of explanation Saturday, Biden hinted at the difficult politics he is facing as his administration attempts to halt the surge of migrants, particularly unaccompanied minors, across the southern border.
He inferred that his plans to raise the cap, which he affirmed in a speech in February, had been complicated by what he referred to as the “crisis” on the border “with young people,” uttering a word that his administration has tried to avoid in relation to the influx on unaccompanied migrant children.
“We’re going to increase the number,” Biden told reporters of the refugee cap as he left the Wilmington Country Club. “We couldn’t do two things at once. But now we are going to increase the number.” [So what now makes it possible to do the two things at once?—ed]
[….]
It was a victory for progressives who, along with humanitarian groups, directed a wave of scorn and fury at the President on Friday the likes of which he has not seen during his nearly three months in office.
[….]
The Biden administration’s equivocation [aka deliberate evasiveness —ed] on the refugee cap reflects the heat they are facing about the crisis on the southern border in the middle of a pandemic — and the fear that Americans will conflate the two issues, even though they are distinctly different policy areas.
Here is the boogeyman in the closet!
A majority of Americans disapprove of Biden’s border policy, or lack of policy, and the 2022 midterm elections are around the corner.
A Quinnipiac poll released last week showed that just 29% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the situation at the southern border, while 55% disapprove. With no immediate solutions in sight, that immigration issue once again looms large for Democrats as they seek to hold onto and grow their congressional majorities in next year’s midterm elections.
I’m posting the entire exchangein the White House briefing room between press secretary Psaki and an unidentified reporter as Psaki tries to explain the flip-flopping Biden refugee policy; and, throws the blame to who else—President Trump.
Q Thanks, Jen. Can you explain where things stand right now when it comes to the refugee ban? First off, the White House said on Friday that, actually, the 15,000 cap that was set by the Trump administration was — remained justified. But then later, you said, “Actually, no, the number is going to go up by May 15th.”
MS. PSAKI: I wouldn’t — I would dispute that being our characterization on Friday, but let me walk you through what we did announce.
Last week’s announcement — or Friday’s announcement, I should say, was an effort — an important step forward, in our view — to reverse the Trump policy that banned refugees from many key regions of the world. So there were many parts of the Middle East, parts of Africa where refugees could not apply and could not come into the United States. And part — as a result of that, there were very limited number of refugees — in the low thousands — that had come over in a extensive period of time during the Trump administration. That was an important step, on — in our view.
In addition, there had been refugee flights that had not traveled, that had not been taking off to come to the United States, and we resumed those flights. This was always meant to be just the beginning.
In the announcement we made on Friday, we were clear in the emergency presidential determination that if 15,000 is reached, a subsequent presidential determination would be issued to increase admissions as appropriate. And that is certainly our expectation.
In addition, we also announced on Friday that the President — while we are assessing right now what is possible in terms of — given the fact that the processing — the asylum processing has been hollowed out from the State Department, and also the ORR — the Office of Refugee Resettlement — has also been hollowed out in terms of personnel, staffing, and financial and funding needs, we are — have every intention to increase the cap and to make an announcement of that by May 15th at the latest. And I expect it will be sooner than that.
The President also remains committed to pursuing the aspirational goal of reaching 125,000 refugees by the end of the next fiscal year.
Q And what role has the situation at the border, which the President called a “crisis” this weekend — what role has that played in decision making around the refugee cap?
MS. PSAKI: Sure. Well, if I walk you back just a little bit — and hopefully this will be helpful to you — during the transition, our team was — made an assessment of what our refugee cap should look like.
And we looked back at the last few years and assessed that, because of the very low numbers — the restrictions I just mentioned that were in place, restricting refugees from coming from the Middle — parts of the Middle East — most of the Middle East, I should say, and Africa — we needed to go big and have a bold goal.
And so that’s why we set the 125,000 cap objective by the end of fiscal year ’22. 62,500 was a down payment — meant to be a down payment in this year. That was why we set that goal. Now, that’s an a- — that was an aspirational increase of 10 times what was being led in by the Trump administration.
In that period of time — we came into office; the President made that announcement, made those — put those aspirational goals out there — there were a couple things that happened: One, as you alluded to, there was an increase of unaccompanied children at the border. Our policy was always going to be to welcome those children in, find a place where they can be sheltered and treated humanely and safely. That increase and that influx, as you all know, was higher than most people, including us, anticipated.
The second factor was that we did not — it took us some time to recognize how hollowed out these systems were. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees — while there have been different pots of money and different personnel — has both the resettling of refugees as well as unaccompanied children. And there is — there are questions and have been assessments about reprogramming of funds and how we can address both at the same time. And certainly, that ability and ensuring we can do that effectively has been on the President’s mind.
As I have pointed out previously, nearly two decades ago Congress gave the job of dealing with Unaccompanied Alien Children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement because it was part of the goal of making you, and the media believe that the illegal alien children are legitimate refugees.
LOL! You might be noticing that the word “alien” has been removed throughout government websites—more progressive propaganda techniques at work. Saying “illegal alien” is forbidden in Joe Biden’s America, so use it every chance you get!
The unidentified reporter continues….
Q And then, finally, on a somewhat related matter: The President has said that climate change is one of the factors that has created this surge at the border, but there are no Central American countries that have been invited to the Climate Summit that the White House is putting on. Is there — how did you decide which countries to invite? And has it been considered whether or not to invite some Central American countries?
I included that last question because it is related.
The socialists are working hard now to convince the media and the public that the next big wave of refugees will be the so-called climate refugees as they conflate weather-related migration to the issue of legitimate persecuted refugees.
Lesson for you: Immigration is Chairman Joe’s Achilles heel.
Conflate! Conflate! Conflate!
They, the Leftwing language propagandists, conflated legal refugees with illegal aliens for decades, so you must continue to conflate the refugee program with the border invasion because it is all part of one major socialist/progressive goal and that is to change America by changing the people.
Because this story is so important, I’m posting it instead of aweekly round-up of refugee news.
And, besides, the US Refugee Admissions Program has been stalled for some mysterious reason by the Biden gang so there isn’t a lot new since last week.
I can only guess the hold-up is because they have created such a crisis at our wide open border with their fake refugee invasion that they aren’t beginning the large movement they promised the Left of Africans, Asians and Middle Easterners into the country fearing more anger from their 80 million voters! (Only 24% of all Americans support Biden border policies.)
That isn’t making the nine contractors***, who are paid by you and me to place them, happy.
However, two of the nine contractors are busy collecting millions to ostensibly take care of the women and kids, including some “not so nice women,” arriving at the border in historically high numbers.
Those two are the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, and Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago greet asylum seekers at the Humanitarian Respite Center at Sacred Heart Church in McAllen, Texas, in 2017, the location of the viral video from Infowars last week.
First, to get a feel for the magnitude of the crisis, see theNew York Timesstory headlined:
Young Migrants Crowd Shelters, Posing Test for Biden
The administration is under intensifying pressure to expand its capacity to care for as many as 35,000 unaccompanied minors, part of a wave of people crossing the border.
More than 20,000 children and teenagers are in the custody of a government system that is already at “103 percent of capacity,” including nearly 17,000 in shelters run by the health department, according to briefing materials from Operation Artemis, a response to the border crisis led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Government projections obtained by The New York Times show there could be more than 35,000 migrant children to be cared for by June — a prospect that one former senior health and human services official called “terrifying.”
The NYT story does not mention the role Catholic agencies are playing, but does mention Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. Of course you are led to believe that they are doing their work of moving migrants to the interior US out of the goodness of their Christian hearts.
Viral Video
Now,, see the controversial film in front of a Catholic agency in McAllen, Texas from Infowarsthis week if you aren’t one of the million or so who have already seen it.
Needless to say, Catholic Charities has blasted Jones’ video saying at Catholic World Report:
Catholic Charities Rio Grande Valley on Thursday said a viral video of their work with migrant children on the U.S.-Mexico border is “inaccurate and unauthorized.”
We have been doing our humanitarian work for years, said Pimental director of Catholic Charities Rio Grande Valley.
One of those on the scene for the confrontation in front of McAllen’s Catholic Charities facility is Tim Enlowand it is worth an hour of your time to see and hear him explain to patriot interviewer Delora O’Brien what exactly went down that day.
One of the most shocking revelations in the interview is that Enlow describes the arrival at the scene of a white man identifying himself as wealthy and from Philadelphia who claims he was told by a nun! that he could come down to McAllen and pick up a couple of van loads of single women he could care for and provide work for!
Watch it before Youtube removes it! Hat tip: Robin.
O’Brien and Enlow charge that the government, our US government, is sponsoring child smuggling!
Your tax dollars at work!
They are more right than they know since both Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) are raking in millions from the US Treasury to ‘care for’ Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC).
If you are a long-time reader of RRW, this news is not new!
I bet for others, you had no idea that YOUR TAX DOLLARS were paying these ‘religious’ charities for their work!
Data for the Bishops from USA Spending where all federal grants and contracts are catalogued.
Here we learn that the USCCB has pulled in $17.9 million in just the last 12 months for their UAC ‘care.’
The UACs represent the biggest chunk of the Bishops payola right now.
Below you can see a year-to-year comparison.
They have lost some serious money since Obama, but they are picking up steam again. See for FY21, which we are in right now, they anticipate more millions this fiscal year as represented by the yellow line.
LIRS doesn’t need to be bringing in refugees from around the world, they are doing very well taking care of the illegal alien children. The $55 million is their take (of your money) for the children! over the last twelve months.
By the way, LIRS is over 90% taxpayer funded. There is no passing the plate at Sunday services for them!
Longtime readers know thatLIRS was mired in controversya few years ago, but notice how much the Trump Administration was shelling out to them. More than any Obama year! Pity that Trump never put anyone into key positions who knew where the bodies were buried.
***In case you are new to RRW, here are all of the contractors.
They worked to ‘elect’ Biden/Harris and lobby for open borders. As taxpayers you pay them millions annually to change America by changing the people.
“Biden’s delay on welcoming refugees has been a huge disappointment for refugee advocates.”
(Boston Globe columnist, Marcela García)
The refugee news from the last week primarily revolves around two main themes—the ‘children’ surging across the US border and where to put them before releasing them into the country; and why Biden has yet to sign the document to start the flow of third world refugees from Asia, Africa and the Middle East to Anytown, USA.
The ‘children’ as we have been reporting in recent weeks are not refugees even as the open-borders-promoting mainstream media wants you to believe they are.
The mostly teenagers are illegal aliens hoping to claim asylum, or so they say.
The vast majority will never achieve refugee status because most will never appear in any asylum adjudication process, and even if they did show up few could prove that they were persecuted in their home country.
Also, as I have been saying, the largest number of those getting in are older teens who will soon age-out of the system altogether. In one story this week a weak attempt was made to answer the question—what happens when they age-out?
What happens to unaccompanied migrant children when they turn 18?
They must find a sponsor—-what a joke!
Moving on to the other major theme of the week, the mystery deepens—so why hasn’t Biden signed the annual determination document that would lift Trump’s low number from 15,000 refugees to 62,500 for the fiscal year?
Refugee contractors heads are exploding as their man Chairman Joe isn’t removing Trump’s refugee ceiling.
His State Department already told Congress that the Administration wants 62,500, an absolutely unattainable number as the fiscal year ends in a little over 5 and a half months.
But, no Biden signature yet!
What surprises me most is that the refugee contractors*** who have a pipeline into the State Department, a pipeline that was functioning during the Trump years, don’t appear to know what the hold-up is.
However, a theory is developing—Biden doesn’t want to look TOO PRO-IMMIGRANT!
WTH!
The crisis on the border alone tells us it is a little late for that!
Everyone with eyes can see that the Biden/Harris administration is the most PRO-immigrant and most Americans-last administration of all time.
Is Biden afraid of appearing too soft on immigration?
The official name of the malady is xenophobia. Donald Trump did everything he could to spread the condition, and it still infects us. [LOL! They can’t resist whacking Trump!—ed]
Unlike Trump, President Biden doesn’t fear displaced foreigners who fled their homes due to civil conflict, natural disasters, persecution, or systemic violence. Nor does he blatantly use them as handy political props. Still, he may be afraid of appearing soft on immigration, just as some were labeled soft on crime a generation ago.
That could be one explanation for why Biden hasn’t reversed Trump’s historically low refugee admissions cap of 15,000 annually, leaving many in the resettlement world baffled. It could also be that the administration is consumed with managing the influx of migrant children at the US-Mexico border.
Regardless of the reason, Biden’s delay on welcoming refugees has been a huge disappointment for refugee advocates.
The Globe opinion piece directs us to an exchange that happened at a White House press briefing with Jen Psaki on Thursday. The reporter is not identified:
Q Gotcha. And then, a quick follow-up. Why haven’t refugee flights continued at this point? Last month, the President did announce that he intended to raise the refugee cap before the typical, you know, end of the fiscal year —
MS. PSAKI: Yeah.
Q — where it traditionally happens. That hasn’t seemed to happen yet. Why haven’t those flights continued?
MS. PSAKI: He remains committed, but I don’t have an update on the timing of the flights.
Q Does it have anything to do with the fact that resources are going towards the border at this time? Or —
Incidentally, the Biden team has put the Temporary Protected Status program on steroidsdemonstrating that their pro-immigration policies are moving full steam ahead, except (strangely) for the Refugee Admissions Program.
Here we see the not wanting to look too PRO-immigrant theme continued at the Buffalo News:
Refugee numbers drop in Buffalo – and Biden isn’t boosting them
Privately, some refugee advocates speculate that Biden is delaying opening up refugee resettlement so long as undocumented immigrants continue crossing the border with Mexico in record numbers, perhaps fearing political blowback from any move that might be seen as pro-immigrant.
Why is Buffalo so eager for more refugees?
Dear readers, this is a major reason why Democrats want refugees!
Democrat-run cities are dying and they see that moving the third world to their cities will be their ticket to saving them and their own political power. Nevermind that you pay for it both financially and culturally.
The Buffalo News continues….
Biden’s inaction has prompted a growing sense of frustration among those long have backed refugee resettlement as a key cog in stabilizing or even growing Buffalo’s population, such as Rep. Brian Higgins.
“Buffalo is among the most successful refugee resettlement cities in America,” said Higgins, a Buffalo Democrat. “President Biden should immediately lift the previous administration’s arbitrary and cruel refugee resettlement limits.”
By the way, besides the fact that dying cities need bodies to keep Dems in power, it isn’t just the Democrats. The globalists (including Republicans!) push for cheap labor, as outlined in a lengthy, but well worth reading treatise at the Last Refuge, explains more.
That is, if he and Kamala make it to the White House.
They campaigned on reversing all of what they claim were draconian policies by the Trump White House to slow the flow across our southern border and to halt the influx of impoverished, possibly sick, low skilled workers, eg. refugees to America.
Will Biden be called a racist if he leaves many of Trump’s immigration policies in place? Not a chance!
Since the Chinese virus reared its ugly head in the spring, much of the Trump team’s actions were to slow the arrival of the COVID-19 virus potentially arriving with the migrants.
As a result Trump was called a racist and a white nationalist by the Biden-supporting media.
Now I am seeing one story after another about how the Harris/Biden administration might have to go very slowly to unravel Trump’s efforts to keep America safe and Americans working.
LOL! I will be looking for the Leftist media to label Biden an evil racist when he will almost certainly not be able to fling open America’s gates for months or even years!
It wasn’t long after Election Steal Day in the weeks following November 3rd, that the stories began popping up about a new surge on the border.
U.S. agents apprehend 1,000 migrant children in 6 days as crossings along Mexican border rise
By the way, unaccompanied alien children are the responsibility of the US Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Many paragraphs into the story we learn that oopsy(!), maybe Joe and Kamala cannot immediately reverse Trump’s immigration control strategies, especially as Americans will be furious if it is done while the virus rages on.
Mr. Biden’s team has also pledged to review the expulsions policy to ensure border-crossers “have the ability to submit their asylum claims.”
Andrew Selee, president of the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute, said ending the “Remain in Mexico” program and the expulsions too quickly could lead to a surge in border crossings.
He suggested the incoming Biden administration could end Remain-in-Mexico but temporarily retain the expulsion policy, a scenario that could be complicated by legal challenges and reporting that shows public health officials were pressured by the White House to authorize the expulsions.
Selee said an influx in border arrests could hurt chances of a divided Congress passing immigration legislation, including one that provides a pathway to U.S. citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) beneficiaries. Republicans lawmakers blamed the DACA program for a surge in border apprehensions of Central American children in 2014, even though the policy, established in 2012, did not benefit new arrivals.
Before completely ending Mr. Trump’s policies, Selee said the incoming Biden administration should deploy more asylum officers, surge resources to the border and expand case management programs that allow migrants to complete their U.S. immigration proceedings outside of detention centers. Otherwise, he added, a sharp increase in unauthorized migration could leave the U.S. government unprepared, worsen conditions in temporary migrant holding facilities and lead to more draconian enforcement policies.
“You’re stuck between a rock and a hard place: Either you start releasing people in the general population or you hold them in the middle of a pandemic,” Selee said.
“If you try to be the anti-Trump on day one, you will end up acting like Trump in the end,” he added. “If you try and throw out everything Trump has done on day one, without having an alternative in place, you’ll end up doing the same things Trump did.”
And, here (read it yourself) is a more recent warning about the ‘kids’ rushing the border. From USA Today:
Thousands of unaccompanied minors arrive at US-Mexico border as Border Patrol grapples with COVID-19 deaths
Lowering expectations?
And, a little nugget in this news from the Pittsburgh Post Gazetteindicates that the Refugee Resettlement Industry has begun to tamp down expectations for a huge jump in new refugees being flown into your towns and cities anytime soon.
Biden campaigned on restoring the flow of refugees into the country from Trump’s less than 20,000 annual refugee admissions to a whopping 125,000 in year one he said!
Pittsburgh 2017 anti-Trump rally. Will they protest if Biden doesn’t move fast enough to reverse Trump’s policies? Not a chance.
Pittsburgh-area agencies await word on Biden’s refugee plan
Deep into this story we have this news that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Societyis telling its satellite offices that the flood isn’t coming right away.
While the Biden team hasn’t detailed its plans, Ms. Aizenman has heard speculation from her agency’s national affiliate that there might be some increases later in 2021, with a higher ceiling in 2022.
But wait! That is not what we heard BEFORE November 3rd.
(Ms. Aizenman is the director of refugee and immigrant services at Jewish Family and Community Services which is a subcontractor of HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)).
We had a hint that increases in refugee numbers might not be cominghere the other day.
If Biden and Harris (or Harris and someone else!) are installed in the White House, we will be watching! I know it is serious, but I anticipate being amused as they squirm to get out from between a rock and a hard place.
Clever America Firsters will have to figure out how to keep up the pressure on that rock.
